Bottle of pop, please

In a story I read a few days ago, a guy from Los Angeles, visiting relatives in Minnesota, was asked if he wanted a bottle of pop.  He thought to  himself, "Pop.  I'd forgotten I was in the Midwest."

And yet, I grew up in Southwest Washington -- also on the West Coast -- and I always called a soft drink "pop."  So did everyone I knew.  It wasn't until I attended college in California that I heard those around me calling pop "soda."  It was one of those multi-cultural learning experiences, like learning not to pronounce "creek" as "crick."

What do I call it now?  I haven't called a soft drink "pop" for years.  But I don't call it soda, either, at least without feeling somewhat self-conscious that I'm speaking a foreign language.  I guess that what we called "pop" in my neck of the woods as a kid, I now call "a soft drink"

But the meaning really isn't the same.  When I think of "soft drink," I think of one of the several brands of cola.  And maybe root beer, or, for some folks, Dr. Pepper or Mountain Dew.  It's easier to just say "Coke" or "Diet Coke" or "Pepsi."  "Pop," on the other hand, encompassed a vast spectrum of colors and flavors.  

It's like saying that the French expression "une tasse de café" means a cup of coffee.  Literally it does, but -- at least before globalization and Starbucks appeared on the scene -- what a Parisian visualized as une tasse de café was something very different from what an American visualized as a cup of coffee -- which was usually, a large mug of black liquid poured out of a percolator. 

So, if "pop" didn't mean quite the same to me when I was a kid, how was it different from today's "soft drink," or "soda"?  Coke and Pepsi, were pop, of course, but pop wasn't reducible to cola drinks or root beer -- it came in many flavors.  Beyond that, a bottle of pop differed visually and tactilely from the usual can of soda one gets today in a store or out of a machine.

Pop came in bottles, unless it was served in a glass in a restaurant.  (Or "soda fountain," a term we used routinely, but mentally identifying "soda" with "ice cream soda," not with pop.)  They came in bright colors -- orange, lemon-lime, grape, cream (a light coffee color), raspberry, cherry, etc.  Moreover, the bottles usually were found resting in a bath of cold water -- either to be removed and paid for at the counter, or to be worked out of the water through a coin operated mechanism.  When you were thirsty, which as kids we usually were, nothing could beat that moment of anticipation as you held a bottle of brightly colored liquid in your hands, feeling the ice-cold water dripping off the bottle -- that moment just before you popped off the cap.

Before you got to the store, you would debate in your mind which flavor of pop you were going to buy, but it wasn't until you actually saw the bottles lined up in their cold water bath that you made your final decision.

So far as I know, pop doesn't come today in the full rainbow of flavors that it did when I was a boy -- although I like to think that in some dusty, small town store, a full array might still be found in an ancient pop dispenser.  Like much in our culture, the voice of advertising has smoothed out the voices of those multitudes of kids with disparate tastes.  "Soda" is California-speak, and that term may have the same connotations for Californians and their ilk as pop does for me; "soft drink," on the other hand, sounds like sales talk, an attempt by advertising folks to iron out the cultural differences among different parts of the country. 

To "blandify" us.  No kid ever begged for "a soft drink."  Many kids begged for "a bottle of pop."

But, as I say, I've abandoned "pop" from my vocabulary.  If I decline a beer today (rarely!), I'll say, "No thanks, but could I have a soft drink?"  I can't say, with a straight face, "How about a bottle of pop?"

Besides, true "pop" no longer really exists.

Hooray! Covid is Dead!

Strange, isn't it?

Within a few hours of each other, most of America's airlines on Monday abandoned all requirements that passengers be masked.  At the same time, the shopping mall near my house became full of unmasked customers, whereas a few days earlier most customers had been masked.  Same with Safeway this morning, where I buy my groceries.

All because a federal judge in Florida -- a judge appointed by Trump, who ignored a rating of "not qualified" by the American Bar Association in making his appointment -- ruled that the C.D.C. had overstepped its legal authority and had not followed proper rule-making procedures, and that therefor the federal rule was invalid.

No one waited to see if the ruling was to be appealed, or if the judge would be asked to stay her ruling pending appeal.   Within hours, not only all major airlines, but also Amtrak and transportation authorities in a number of cities across the nation stopped enforcing the masking requirement, and, in most cases, dropped their own requirements.

It's as though this one Florida judge had declared the pandemic over -- even as Covid incidence has been rising in most states, in response to the BA-2 subvariant -- and that we have returned to the pre-pandemic days of 2019.  "Let the good times roll!" the populace exults.  Let's dance through the tulips, with happy Disney birds flying and singing joyfully about our heads and squirrels exchanging kisses in the background.

No thanks.  Not for me.  My mask stays on whenever I'm indoors in a public setting, except while eating.  It stays on especially in crowded airplanes, trains, buses, subways, and light rail.  It stays on and I'll glower at those of my un-masked neighbors who blow their possibly virus-laden breaths in my direction.

My fellow Americans often strike me as a class of mindless kindergarten children, totally lacking in self-discipline.  I probably strike them as a cruel, forbidding, kill-joy headmaster in a nineteenth century British school.

We'll see who laughs last.

Here we go again!

Will it be a new ritual, two or three times a year?  I mean the Covid booster, of course.

I finished my two-shot Pfizer series back in February 2021.  Seven months later, I was boosted (or "boostered," as I like to say).  And now, yesterday, I received my second booster.

The U.S. government seems rather ambivalent as to whether the average American needs a second booster, at least this soon after the first booster was given, presumably sometime last fall.  But the government experts seem more enthusiastic when it comes to the "elderly," which now apparently includes everyone over the age of 60 or 65.  

The CDC itself recommends first (Pfizer) boosters for everyone aged 12 or older, and leaves it up to individuals aged 50 and over whether to seek out a second booster.  The CDC does require that a second booster come no earlier than four months after the first.  I hardly know anyone under 50, so it feels like the entire universe is eligible for that second booster.

I have no question at all as to the safety of the booster, and I conclude that it's at least more probable than not that the second booster will provide me with an increase in immunity.  The medical profession is devoted to the distinction between increased immunity from severe illness or death on the one hand, for which the first booster supposedly still provides protection, and increased immunity from even "mild" contagion on the other.  It's those words "mild" and "severe" that disturb me.  I have no interest in testing their boundaries with my own health.  I was happy to err on the side of caution by getting that jab in the arm on Thursday.

My only concern is that in another four months I'll be headed for Scotland and Italy. Both of those countries are now experiencing an incidence of Covid much higher than that in the United States (but far below some of the levels we've seen over the past two years).  Their numbers do seem to be moving in the right direction at present, although we now have the new BA-2 subvariant to haunt our minds.  

Will I need a third booster before setting off for Europe in August?  I'm sure the experts will still be arguing, and I'm also sure that -- unless Covid has become a trivial concern by that time -- I'll be wanting that additional protection.  If the same standards exist for a third booster as for the second, I won't be eligible for a third booster until August 13 -- just two weeks before I fly to Glasgow.  That timing will work out ok for me, assuming I can get the shot as soon as I qualify.

Side effects?  As I've mentioned before, I've had no side effects from my first three Covid shots -- or, for that matter from my last two flu shots.  Twenty-four hours after my second booster, I still have no symptoms.  Either I no longer have any effective immune system at all to be disturbed by these shots, or I have an extremely competent immune system that gives each shot its  immediate attention without getting all riled up and giving me irritating symptoms.  Symptoms that might -- to a frustrated and undiscerning mind -- seem almost as bad as Covid itself.

Anyway, I'm pleased with having received my second booster, and after a week or so -- when enhanced protection kicks in -- will feel quite brave as I rub shoulders with my fellow man.

But I'll still wear a mask in enclosed public places.

The Man in the Attic

My bathroom has a combination bath/shower.  With the usual selector knob -- you turn it one way, and you get water through the spout into the tub; you turn it the other way, and you get a shower.  On mine, if you turn it half way, water comes out in equal proportions from the spout and from the shower.

At the end of my shower, after turning off the water, I routinely turn the knob half way, to totally drain the pipes.  But sometimes I get distracted and forget.  My last shower was such an occasion, apparently, because when I tried to turn the selector knob to tub to obtain the right temperature before turning it to shower, I found it already on the tub option.

The normal response, of course, is -- as I said -- I forgot to drain the pipes last time I showered.  And this was my rational response today.  But deep inside, I felt alarm.  My instincts told me, "The Man in the Attic has taken a shower while I was out of the house."

Who is this mythical attic dweller?  And whence cometh he?  

Back when I was a kid, I was much smaller and the photo supplements in the Sunday newspaper -- notably Parade Magazine -- were much heftier.  One Sunday, I read about a couple who had discovered that some guy, without their knowledge, had been living for a long time in their attic.  He would come out for food and water, and possibly exercise, only when the owners were safely gone.  You might say he was an early example of homelessness, except he wasn't -- he had found a home.

The hair on my young neck stood up when I read this.  Our house didn't have an attic, as such, but it had a lot of dark crawl spaces emptying through cupboard doors into the upstairs bedroom that I shared with my brother.  My reaction was similar to my terrified reaction when I read a "comic" book about a mirror through which our hero's evil double came out at night and created havoc.  For years, I made sure my desktop mirror was covered, or at least turned to the wall, before going to sleep.  But that's another (embarrassing) story.

My brother and I reinforced each other's courage, and we would occasionally examine the crawl spaces by flashlight.  I'm happy to report that no outsider was ever discovered.  But they might have been.  It could happen.  It happened to those folks in Parade Magazine.

I grew up, of course, and put aside childish things.  Or did I?  I now live in a two story house, with an attic of sorts.  Not an easily accessible attic.  While I was in college, my family lived in a  house with a serious attic, where one opened a trapdoor and a nice set of stairs slid down.  The attic interior was more or less finished, according to photos I've seen of it, but I don't remember ever investigating it.  Or being concerned about it.

No, my present attic is accessible only through a small covered opening in the ceiling of the hall adjoining my bedroom.   If you were fat, as many Americans are, you might get stuck trying to enter it.  And you would have to stand on a chair, push the cover aside, and lift yourself by your arms into the attic.  A fairly athletic endeavor.  And not one I've ever attempted.

Not because I'm too weak or too lazy.  Mainly out of an absurd sense of fear, fear of what I might find up there.  Maybe not a person currently living there.  Maybe just an old sleeping bag, a lot of empty food cans, various drug paraphernalia?  I've lived in this house for 35 years -- what are the odds that no one has ever lived in my attic in all that time?  Did I tell you what I read in Parade Magazine ....!?

Several years ago, my brother was helping me with various issues of home maintenance.  I mentioned that I'd heard rats scurrying about at times in the past, and that a neighbor had claimed to have seen an opossum slipping his way into the attic through a presumed opening to the exterior.  My brother had no qualms about slipping through the narrow entrance and checking it out.  No rat droppings.  No openings to the outside.  And most surprising of all, no signs of human habitation.

I'm sure he gave me his honest opinion as to what he'd seen.  Or thought he saw.  But he isn't a trained inspector of attics, is he?  Seeking out evidence of human habitation isn't one of his many abilities.  Maybe the Man in the Attic isn't really the cause of the knob's position in my shower -- I'm a rational fellow, and I realize I may be absent-minded at times.  (Although I checked my towel and washcloth before taking my shower today -- just a precaution, to see if they were suspiciously damp.)

But there's been someone up there at some point.  (And I'm just as sure of that as Trump is sure of election fraud.)  There may be someone up there right now.  In fact, didn't I just heard a creaking up in the attic........????

Ritorno al Lago di Como

If you recall, I returned from Lake Como last September, ecstatic about the experience.  My sister, our cousin, and I had rented a house for a week on the western shore of the lake, about three miles north of Menaggio.  I so enjoyed the house, the lake, the entire experience that I was determined to repeat it -- to repeat it, I said at first, "soon, but "soon" soon became, in my mind, this year, 2022.

Unfortunately, the agent who had rented us the house told us that the house was not available for rental in 2022, advice that was confirmed by another agent.  We tried finding another suitable rental, until I suddenly discovered an agent who did represent the house's owners -- and yes! the house was available.

Deposits were quickly paid, agreements were signed and voilá!  I found myself renting the house for not one, but two weeks in 2022.  In September, at exactly the same time as I had enjoyed it last year.  

I do try not to be too exuberant in my hopes, recalling Heraclitus's warning about stepping in the same river twice.

Renting was easy; finding the right occupants -- besides myself -- was more difficult.  I've finally assembled two groups, one for each week.  The first week will consist of a close friend from graduate school days, and his extended family.  Six persons, besides myself.  Possibly seven, if my friend's son is able to get away from work.

The second week will consist of myself, my sister, and various family members and friends from Sonoma.   Seven persons besides myself (with one of those persons still uncertain).

Both weeks will be quite a change, as far as occupancy goes, from our group of three in 2021.  But the house is reasonably spacious, and I think it will work out fine.

Our return to Lake Como is still five months away, of course, but it comes to mind now because I've just spent quite a bit of time lining up a hotel room in Milan for all of us First Week-ers, for the night before we jump on the train to Como city, and then transfer to the ferry from Como to Menaggio.  This exercise has not been as easy as anticipated.

Not only is our rental house in far greater demand this summer than last, but so are accommodations in Milan.  My sister reports that hotels she and our cousin rented in Milan last year are now going for three times the rental this year.  If any of my readers are thinking of European travel this season, they should be forewarned!

Not only are the rentals more expensive, but the rooms available are increasingly scarce.  I located a moderately priced hotel close to Milan's central railway station yesterday, and snapped  up the last three standard double rooms available.  We needed one more single room, and were forced to rent a double "deluxe" room for about $50 more than the others.  Lining up rooms acceptable to everyone has been a bit trying, but actually I've always enjoyed being a "travel agent."  

I also secured a single room for two nights, just for myself, after my two weeks at Lake Como were over, at a different but similar hotel; that passing of two weeks, taking us into the last week of September, made a big difference.  Rooms were cheaper and much more available, at least at that one hotel.

I'll just note, and probably will describe in more detail later, that getting to Milan at the appropriate time before we go to Como will be complicated for my friend and me, both of whom will be hiking for ten days in Scotland, a hike that will not be completed until very close to the day we have to be in Milan.  We are still trying to find an appropriate flight from Glasgow to Milan.

All a bit complicated, all wonderful, all keeping me excited in the months to come.  My readers will be subjected to additional details in the near future.                           

Sonoma ghosts

Home towns are where our ghosts live.  Ghosts of relatives, now dead, and of friends, now lost.  But especially ghosts of ourselves and our siblings -- ghosts of ourselves at every age.  For me, perhaps, the ghosts I see most clearly -- my ur-ghosts -- are of myself at 13, my brother at 10, and my sister at 5.  

My home town was a medium-sized city on the Columbia River in Southwest Washington.  That's where we three kids grew up, from birth through high school.  Even after I had left town for college and graduate school, I considered that home town my "home."  Not until I started law school, at age 31, did I begin looking elsewhere -- ultimately, not so far away, in Seattle.

But sometimes, we also acquire home towns of adoption, towns that come along later in our lives, towns in which our lives become so ingrained that they also are haunted by our ghosts.  For me, such a town is Sonoma, California.  

I've never lived in Sonoma, which makes calling it my adopted "home town" a bit awkward, but such is the reality.  When I visit Sonoma, I do see ghosts.

My sister, her husband, and her oldest son moved to Sonoma in the mid-70s.  Sonoma now, of course, is nationally known as a center of wine-tourism, its central Plaza surrounded by hotels, fairly expensive bars and restaurants, and purveyors of luxury goods.  And a much-utilized ice cream shop.   Our oldest ghosts, however, arose out of an era when the town, although already a tourist attraction with many reminders of Californian pre-Gold Rush days, was also still a town with a more decidedly agricultural flavor than it possesses now -- a town where you could find a feed and seed store on the Plaza.     

My sister's two younger sons were born in Sonoma.  She, her husband (a physician), and her three sons lived -- and held court -- in a pleasant, but not extravagant, house on a hill above Sonoma Valley.  I visited them probably twice annually.  Over the years, I became acquainted with their friends, scattered around the valley.  I played uncle to her kids, taking them with me on hiking trips, once they reached their teens.  Today, I know my way around Sonoma better than I know large parts of my own home town in Washington.

These paragraphs are all introduction to the fact that I spent the past week attending a de facto family reunion in Sonoma.  The occasion was the return to America, for the first time since before the pandemic, of my sister's middle son Denny, an adventuresome sort who has spent several years teaching middle school in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  He arrived with his wife Jessie, who is also a Sonoma native.

Greeting Denny was the occasion for our gathering, but -- like a wedding or a funeral -- the gathering also served as an excuse to meet up and socialize with folks we see all too seldom.  Couples and individuals were coming and going during the six days I was in Sonoma.  Besides all the relatives, an old friend, Chris, who Denny and I met during a trek in Peru 25 years ago, came up from San Francisco, and we visited one of my sister's oldest friends, Francine, who we found confined to quarters by a poorly-timed broken ankle.  We also had a chance to visit with Pascal -- whose name appears in numerous reports on this blog of our foreign treks together -- and his wife.  They moved back to Sonoma from San Francisco several years ago.

The six days passed all too quickly.  We all love to eat, and we were in the right town for that activity.  Several of us love to hike, and we did a couple of hikes in the hills -- hills beautifully garbed in the temporary green of Spring -- surrounding Sonoma.  Many of us, in addition, enjoyed a short walk through hills to the remains of Jack London's "Wolf House," in near-by Glen Ellen.  I tried to tell myself that these hikes were working off the calories consumed during our many meals, but my bathroom scale, once I was back in Seattle, just laughed at my presumption.  

Both meals and hikes were opportunities to do the one thing most of us enjoy more than eating and hiking -- which is, of course, talking.  Subjects ranged from the early days (early, for us, that is) of Sonoma, through our more recent adventures, and forward into our plans for the future.  All served up, spiced and well seasoned by our family's famously bizarre sense of humor.

I find many ghosts in Sonoma.  Ghosts of loved ones with whom we once shared meals but who are no longer with us; ghosts of ourselves as children, and as young people; ghosts even, perhaps, of friends who have drifted away to other parts of the country.  As with all families, some of those ghosts represent unhappy times.  But most of my own family's ghosts move happily about the city.  This week, we found ourselves surrounded solely by ghosts who were not only happy, but ghosts who gladly joined in our general hilarity.

We need to do stuff like this more often.  As do all families.

Getting high in Delphi

As I review travel journals from my past, I often whine about how -- unlike us at their age -- kids nowadays don't do anything but sit at home and play with their electronic toys.  I was happy to learn, however, that a friend's 20-year-old twin grandchildren are spending their one week spring break on a whirlwind trip to Amsterdam.  No, not part of a tour group, or a study program, or a group of Dutch food enthusiasts.  They're doing what we used to do at their age -- just showing up someplace foreign, and seeing what  happens.

In commemoration -- despite my recent sneering at my occasional posts copied from old travel journals -- I offer the following extract from the journal I kept during a six-week backpacking trip through Europe.  The year was 1970, the year that the press discovered and remarked on the hordes of American kids traveling on the cheap.

I had traveled by bus for five hours (including repair of a flat tire) from Athens up to Delphi on the lower slope of Mount Parnassus.  I had barely emerged from the bus when the proprietor of a hostel grabbed me and bid me enter.  Decent hostel.  Bed in a room shared with three others for 18 drachmas -- just 60 cents in American money.  Yes!  This is what travel in Europe by young people was all about that year!  I met a couple of English lads who shared the room with me, along with a Swiss guy, and we made plans for the next day.

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Friday --31 July [1970]

My two Lancashire friends and I got up early Monday and started the long hike up the slopes of Mt. Parnassus.  We were quite lucky in that the sun was often behind a cloud and so we could escape some of the heat.  Even so, it was slow going, and we lost a lot more water than we had along to replace it.  But the views were fantastic.  We climbed to what I believe are called the Shining Rocks, on either side of the Oracle and Apollo's temple.  To get from one to the other required a long walk back into the hills and up the slopes until the canyon became shallow enough to cross.  Had some good conversation during this, and discovered and photographed a land tortoise. 

Then we made the mistake of trying to descend the cliffs on the right side of the oracle.  There was quite a tricky bit of rock climbing, which became steeper and steeper as I descended -- in the process of which I got separated from my companions.  Finally, I succeeded in thoroughly scaring myself, and carefully retraced my steps back up the cliff and tried to work my way back to where we had crossed the canyon.  My legs were bare and were getting semi-burned (not very bad -- but I didn't know that) and scratched with the prickly gorse I was climbing through.  I made at least one false start down the canyon and had to retrace.  I was having panicky worries of being trapped without water, and I was feeling quite dehydrated.

But all ended well, and I made my way back down, returned to the youth hostel, stuck my mouth under the water tap, and took a cold shower.  The other two didn't get back for an hour, and I was afraid they might be stranded, but they had found a way down the cliff after being thoroughly scared.  It was all in all a memorable hike.  The beauty and wildness and loneliness of the area will, I hope, come out in my slides.

Being recovered, I went over to the ruins and, using their guide book, did a careful study of them.  Saved the museum for the next day, it being close to sunset.  I had dinner alone in the youth hostel's restaurant, and was joined for a beer afterward by my mates, who were preparing their own meals.  A wild bunch of English started a party going, record-playing, dancing, singing and all, and we watched with amusement, nursing our beers.

I seem to have an interesting affinity for the British --seem to be accepted by them as English with an unexplainable U.S. passport.  They were alarmed because an American had replaced the Swiss [in our four-person room] this night, and [the American] wanted me to change places with his friend so they could be together (nothing came of this -- guess they changed their minds).  They said I couldn't do it, they would be overwhelmed with Americanism.  "You're not anti-American, are you?"  "Well, yes, of course!  And these are archetypical Americans!"  Turned out to be a Beach Boy type from Berkeley.

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Not great literature, but my journal captures some of the excitement of the time.  Reminding me not only of the iconic places I visited, but also of some of the people I met.  I hope my friend's twin grandchildren have as much fun in the Netherlands.

Only as old as you feel

"If I'm ninety and believe I'm forty-five, I'm headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub."

--Ursula K. Le Guin

Today's my birthday.  At some point in your life, you reach your last year of feeling able to greet birthdays gleefully.  I think I reached that point the year I turned 16 and could get a driver's license.  Turning 21, and being able to drink legally, is pretty anti-climactic for a college student -- it's not as though he's never tasted alcohol until then.

But, today, I accept one more year fairly complacently, even if I'm well past the stage of being gleeful.  So I'm a bit surprised to read the irate reactions of Ursula K. Le Guin to birthday well-wishers, back when she was only a year older than I am now.  The reaction of Ursula -- a formidable writer of science fiction/fantasy --was essentially, "I'm old, old, old, and don't try to sweet talk me into thinking otherwise!"

A lot of younger people, seeing the reality of old age as entirely negative, see acceptance of age as negative.  Wanting to deal with old people in a positive spirit, they're led to deny old people their reality.

With all good intentions, people say to me, "Oh, you're not old!"

And the pope isn't Catholic.   ...

"My uncle's ninety and he walks eight miles a day."

Lucky Unk.  I hope he never meets that old bully Arthur Ritis or his mean wife Sciatica.  ...

Old age isn't a state of mind.  It's an existential situation.

Would you say to a person paralyzed from the waist down, "Oh you aren't a cripple!  You're only as paralyzed as you think you are!  My cousin broke her back once but she got right over it and now she's in training for the marathon."¹

She segues into some rather painfully true statements about ageism in America, all the while insisting on her status as old.  Really old.  Not the kind of "old" who you see laughing and playing tennis in ads for "Golden Years Active Living Housing." Or for Margaritaville, for that matter.

But then, both Ursula and her husband suffered from crippling sciatica that made walking more than a block or two impossible.  Maybe we all end up there eventually.  But I haven't yet, thank you very much.  Meanwhile, feel free to wish me a happy birthday, and feel no guilt whatsoever at assuring me with a straight face that I don't look a day over 35!

Don't offer to buy me a drink -- I"ll buy you one!

--------------------------

¹ Ursula K. Le Guin, No Time to Spare, "The Diminished Thing" (2017)

Slurs and humility

I took piano lessons for six years as a child.  During my final three years, I would practice one and a half hours each day, usually before school.  I enjoyed it, but -- like many kids -- once I was 15, I decided that enough was enough.  I quit.

Years later, near the end of my legal career, I resumed piano lessons from a teacher in Seattle, dropped out again, and returned to the same teacher several years later.  She was an excellent teacher, far more accomplished than my childhood teacher, having studied at the Leningrad Conservatory as a young woman.  She seemed pleased to have me as a student.

She asked me to perform at a couple of student recitals -- which I did, feeling somewhat awkward among a flock of child and teenaged performers.  I recall performing the second movement to Beethoven's Pathétique Sonata.  To a limited degree, I'm a perfectionist, and I wasn't too happy with my playing. But my teacher told me that it had gone very well, and I took her word for it.

I suppose that compared with her sixth graders, I was a delight to teach.  If I learned all the notes to a piece, followed all the printed notations in the score, and in addition brought some sense of emotional feeling to the piece, she professed herself very happy.  "Good sense of musicality," she would say.

What brings all this to mind is my current reading of Every Good Boy Does Fine, by Jeremy Denk.  I hope to review this excellent book once I finish it, but what I've read so far impresses me with how little I knew about any of the classical pieces I played, with whose playing my teacher had professed herself satisfied.  Denk is not only an outstanding pianist, but an excellent teacher, and his book -- published this week -- is a memoir of his life (written at age 51), intertwined with discussions of the difficulties he had mastering the pieces he was taught.  These discussions are, the reader quickly realizes, a vehicle for teaching the reader an appreciation of musical theory.

For me, it's also been a vehicle for teaching me humility -- although, insofar as my musical training was concerned, attaining humility has been hardly an accomplishment.  I learned to play entire pages, listening to the melody where there was a discernable melody, juicing it up with a bit of emotion, and otherwise just playing the notes.  Denk will spend a number of paragraphs discussing the profound musical effect of omitting just one note in a flight up a scale.  His discussions are a revelation, and what they reveal is that no one ever perfects the playing of a classical piece, because there are always new subtleties to be discovered in a good composition -- subtleties that augment the pianist's understanding of the composer's vision, and that can be incorporated in his performance.

A few minutes ago, I looked over my copy of the score to the second movement of Beethoven's Pathétique, and noted the composer's copious use of "slurs" -- those curving lines above or below the flow of notes.  They indicate phrases, notes that should be considered together, like words in a sentence.  I always ignored them, because the phrasing seemed obvious without them.

Denk, as a college student, tended to ignore them as well.  His teacher demanded otherwise, making him sing nonsense lyrics while playing.

The point of the lyrics was that they would force me to observe the slurs written on the page, taking breaths with the words.  Painstakingly, I played , while Bill made me sing along ....  We practiced until I could do all the slurs exactly as written, which seemed fussy and prissy ....

But Denk appreciated the teaching, once he got the hang of it.  But then a later teacher called the slurs simply "sloppy notation" by Beethoven, notation that should be ignored.

Sometimes, learning from two teachers with opposing views can be valuable.  Denk appeciated the opinions of the second teacher, but ended up siding with the more exacting demands of the first.

These days, I find the slurs almost more beautiful than the notes.  They tell you about the play of the music against the beat, the visible against the invisible. ... Slurs look like an arc, and imply a journey.

I don't offer these quotations because I have any feeling, one way or the other, about slurs.  But Denk's discussions remind us that highly trained musicians can argue over matters that are far above the notice or understanding of a novice pianist -- even one who has been praised for his "musicality" by his well-meaning (and probably long-suffering) teacher. 

Denk's entire book -- in the guise of a well-written, humorous, self-deprecating memoir -- is an encouragement to everyone, whether music novices or experts, to avoid complacency, and to realize that no matter how well you think you know a piece of music, there's always something more to discover. 

Usually, a lot more.

Erich Korngold

Briefly, I should mention that I attended a concert by the Seattle Symphony on Saturday, featuring a stirring performance of the well-known Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5.  Perhaps to offset the Russian flavor of this offering, the night's performance was dedicated to the "brave people of Ukraine," and the yellow and blue colors of the Ukraine flag were projected on the stage's surrounding walls.

The performance was guest conducted by Joshua Weilerstein, the youthful artistic director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, who introduced each piece with a brief talk.  His short lectures were well-presented, and helpful.  His leadership of the orchestra was unusually dynamic, even acrobatic, and the orchestra seemed to respond with vigor.

In response to enthusiastic applause, the orchestra ended the evening with a short musical encore by a Ukrainian composer.

More exciting than the Tchaikovsky, perhaps, was a performance of Erich Korngold's Violin Concerto in D major, immediately before intermission.  The violinist was James Ehnes, who has performed as a guest violinist to great acclaim with orchestras worldwide, and is especially well known in Seattle as artistic director of the Seattle Chamber Music Society.

Korngold composed a ballet at age eleven that took Europe by storm (Der Schneemann), and followed up with a piano sonata at the age of 13, a sonata that was played across Europe by Artur Schnabel..  He is one of history's great child prodigies, but his classical career in Vienna was cut short in 1934 by the rise of Nazism.  Because he was Jewish, Korngold immigrated to America, and accepted an offer to write screen music for Hollywood.  He wrote the scores for 16 Hollywood films, but vowed to compose no more classical works until Hitler was driven from power.

His violin concerto, composed in 1945, was Korngold's attempt to return to classical music after the fall of Germany.  It is a fairly short work, 24 minutes in Saturday's performance, arranged in the traditional three movements.  The music is stirring, and displays themes from a number of the Hollywood scores he had composed earlier.    

According to the program notes, Korngold's attempt to return to classical compositions was not successful with the critics, and for many years his reputation remained that of a Hollywood composer of film scores.  Since 1970, however, again according to the program notes, and after his death in 1957, his compositions have received increased critical appreciation.

The Korngold concerto received an enormous standing ovation from Saturday night's audience, but the applause was probably directed more toward Ehnes's impressive violin technique and musicality, than to the composition itself. 

Ehnes responded to the applause with a short solo encore by Paganini.

Florence's "film"

Stepping out of Villa San Paolo, through the gate, and on to the winding street, via della Piazzola, I experienced a sensation perhaps new to me, but one felt often by first-time visitors to Italy.

Goethe had felt a vague sense of bewildered incredulity ... when, as a starry-eyed northerner, he finally arrived in Rome.  As he writes on November 1, 1786, "I was still afraid I might be dreaming; it was not till I had passed through the Porta del Popolo that I was certain it was true, that I really was in Rome."  A few lines later, he adds: "All the dreams of my youth have come to life; the first engravings I remember -- my father hung views of Rome in the hall -- I now see in reality, and everything I have known for so long -- is now assembled before me.  Wherever I walk, I come upon familiar objects in an unfamiliar world."

I was part of a group of forty university students, beginning a six-month stay on an overseas branch campus.  It had been a long flight from San Francisco to Milan in a chartered DC-6, with refueling stops in Montreal and Shannon, Ireland.  We had arrived at Milan in the dark, and immediately transferred to a bus, riding in the dark to Florence.  We arrived at our new campus at about 2 a.m. on Easter morning.  Our eyes were pressed against the bus windows as we lumbered through the twisting streets of the Florentine outskirts, but could make out little in the dark.

It was my first trip to Italy -- my first trip out of North America.  Like Goethe, I had long been strongly attracted to Italy, but it was all from second hand experiences:  My grandmother's painting in her home of the Rialto Bridge in Venice.  Evocative illustrations of an imagined classical Rome in my high school Latin book.  Stories set in post-war Italy in the neo-Realism Italian films then popular in college towns.

But it wasn't until dawn, when about half our student group emerged tentatively from the villa on our way around the block to attend Easter mass at a local church, that I had my Goethe moment.  A woman, dressed all in black, was standing on her front step, sweeping dust into the narrow street with an ancient broom, a collection of twigs, actually.  I found myself walking through a Vittorio de Sica film set.  I was really in Florence, really in Italy, really in a world unlike anything I'd known.

Events of the next few days only accentuated this feeling.  Visiting the little tabaccheria a block or so from the villa to buy toothpaste ("col-GAH-tay") and hand soap ("pal-mo-LEE-vay").  We had taken a six-credit course in intensive Italian the prior quarter -- now we had to put it to use.  Because no one with whom we had to deal spoke English.  Not even workers whose job involved tourists.

Taking the bus that Easter afternoon from the school to the center of town -- back then, you boarded through the back of the bus and gave your 30 lire fare to a little man sitting at a desk by the door.  He gave you a flimsy paper ticket that no one ever looked at again.  Stopping at a café near the city center and ordering a liter of wine for our group of four or five.  Did we dare, I asked myself?  Half our group was under 21.  No one cared!  No one asked for an ID.  No one even raised a skeptical eyebrow, revealing that he was going along with our little scheme against his better judgment.  Almost as astounding as being served as minors was being allowed to drink at a table on the sidewalk.  Outdoors!  In full view of the public, including small children.!

I was only partially naïve.  I had seen enough movies to have some idea of how life was lived in Italy.  But seeing it all in a movie at a Palo Alto theater was far different from living it.

At the time, during those six months, I felt sorry for the "older generation," most of whom seemed to visit Europe -- if they did at all -- in American Express tour buses.  And, although more tolerant of differences among people now, I still do.  Life isn't the same from a bus window, or while being passively herded about by a tour guide.  As André Aciman, who also wrote the quotation above, has noted in the same recent essay:¹

Visiting a place is not necessarily the experience of it  The real experience is the resonance, the "pre-image," the afterimage, the interpretation of experience, the distortion of experience, the struggle to experience the experience.  What we do when we think about experience, even when we don't exactly know what to make of it, is itself already experience.  It's the radiance we project onto things and that things radiate back to us that constitutes experience.

As Aciman has explained elsewhere, "my Florence" isn't just observing an impressive collection of architecture and paintings, or even drinking wine in a sidewalk café.  My experiences -- both as a child, hearing about Florence, and as a student struggling to find my way about Florence, asking for train tickets in broken Italian, understanding how to cash a check in an Italian bank -- and again, as an adult reflecting back on those student experiences and testing them against my observations during subsequent visits -- all combine to produce "my Florence."  A Florence that is unique to me, but that has enough in common with that of others as to make conversations with them about student travel a study in nostalgia.

Aciman explains this process as the creation of a "film."  Our own experiences with a place, or that we bring to a place, create a "film" about the place, a film that makes that place our own.  Without that film, a city is just bunch of buildings and streets.  We modify the physical reality of a city by the film in which we encase it, a film that then draws us to that city, and makes it a place in which we feel both comfortable and alive. 

Those are thoughts whose truth we all sensed, from the first day we were there -- although truths we would have expressed less fervently and eloquently, perhaps.  As one of our group remarked near the end of our six months, "You know, we will all probably come back here again in the future, but it will never be the same.  We'll be tourists, not Florentine residents."  Her comment suggested a little overseas campus snobbery, one that we all felt, but of course she was right. Even if Florence objectively were to be unchanged, "my Florence" would be different.  "My Florence" is never a completed structure -- it evolves with every new visit, or every book I read about the city, or every news story that originates there.

Four of us spent our last week in Europe, before flying back home, in Paris.  After arrival by train, we took the Metro to the Boulevard Saint-Germain, where the school had booked us hotel rooms.  I walked out of the subway, onto the Boulevard, and once again felt like I was on a movie set.  An American in Paris.  I almost danced down the sidewalk, hearing Gershwin in my head.  My friends laughed, and told me to calm down.  But I was already constructing "my Paris," spreading my own "film" about it.

Italy, my Italy, is magnificent, but in this way not unique. 

------------------------------

¹André Aciman, Homo Irrealis, "In Freud's Shadow, Part 1" (2021)

Quindecennial

It's frightening to consider that a wee innocent babe who arrived on Earth on the day that I posted my first post on this blog would today be a high school student.  And celebrating his 15th birthday.  

A birthday also celebrated by this blog.

Yes, it was on March 20, 2007, that I put pen to paper -- or fingers to keyboard -- and posted my first blog post.  It was a display of brilliance that gave great promise for the future.  In its entirety:

Ok, my friend. Now that you've spent too much time deciding how this blog page should appear esthetically, and even more time deciding how best to present to the indifferent world an idealized description of your ever-important Self, you really might want to decide what it is you're going to write about. Don't you think?

Gosh and golly ... I stare off into space ... and await inspiration.

 

Fortunately, inspiration did arrive, and I thought of a few more things to say in later posts, of which, to date, there have been 1,464.  Readers who were around last year, recall my bragging that I had published a record 148 posts in calendar year 2020.

Nemesis follows hubris, as the Greeks liked to say.  This past year -- as I began complaining as early as October in "Autumnal Melancholy" -- has been a year of writer's block.  I've kept hoping I'd bounce back, but so far it's getting worse.

I did post a moderately acceptable 100 times in calendar year 2021 -- not yet the dread "Nemesis" -- but that number was padded, perhaps, by an unusually high number of reprints from travel journals and other writings from my younger years.  Embarrassingly, those reprints often received the highest amount of reader interest, as measured from recorded hits.

But I'm a fighter, not a quitter.  I will struggle back to new levels of both quality and quantity.

So, as is my annual tradition, let's take a look at both quantity and quality during this past year.  By far, the highest number of hits landed on my summary of my September visit to Lake Como.  Following, by number of hits, were a reminiscence of a troublesome college roommate; a review of Mark Richards's Father, Son, and the Pennine Way; and a tribute to (and obituary for) my closest childhood friend.

As usual, it's easier to list the most popular posts than it is to decide which were the "best."  In my eyes, which were "best" often merely means the ones I feel happiest reading over again now.  Rather than rank them, I think I'll do what I did two years ago -- simply list my nine favorite in order of date of publication.  

1.  "Charley" -- remembering a memorable sophomore roommate.

2.  A description of my first pandemic trip out of state -- by train to Oxnard, California.   "Trains in the Time of Covid".

3.  A review of Mark Richards's Father, Son, and the Pennine Way.  

4.  A review of Catherine Gilbert Murdock's YA novel, DaVinci's Cat.

5.  A salute to the drinking of milk.   Drink Your Milk.

6.  An appreciation of my sister's rural home in central Idaho.  "Nature's Art".

7.  A summary of my stay for a week in a rental on the shore of Lake Como, Italy.  "Happy Days at Lake Como".

8.  A tribute to (and obituary for) a close childhood friend, "Lee Quarnstrom, 1939-2021"

9.  A celebration of November rain in Seattle.  "November Rain".

I've modestly omitted all of my various travel journal reprints, reprints that proved surprisingly popular.  My list is meant to be a list of accomplishments during the past year, not of my writings as a wild-eyed youth.

I look forward to my sixteenth year of blogging.  Hopefully, I'll find ways to shake off  the somewhat puzzling lethargy of 2021.

Back to Bar Harbor

I arouse myself from my blogomatic slumbers, like a great, sleepy bear coming out of hibernation, and I shake my head.  This hasn't been a good week -- a good month -- not just for my blog, but for the world in general.  Several sources agree:  Putin has become the "New Stalin," dragging his nation back into the  isolated, backward morass of the USSR in the 1950s.  

Of course, Stalin was cautious and conservative in his foreign policy, as, generally, were all leaders of the Soviet Union.  In his attack on Ukraine, Putin is more like Mussolini or Hitler, fanatical, aggressive, and emotional.  But domestically, yes.  Putin, like Stalin, has gradually worked himself into the position of an absolute dictator.  A Tsarist ruler.  And like Stalin, he has -- in the past week or so -- completed the elimination of every source of information for his people, other than information that he chooses to release through his own propaganda outlets.  No more internet, no more Facebook or Twitter, no more non-Putin newspapers or television stations.  

To an extent to which our very own Mr. Trump could only dream, Putin has established that -- for Russians -- the truth shall be whatever he finds useful for them to believe.  

And, as this week's Economist notes, in a leader entitled "The Stalinisation of Russia":

And, as Stalin did, Mr. Putin is destroying the bourgeoisie, the great motor of Russia's modernization.  Instead of being sent to the gulag, they are fleeing to cities like Istanbul, in Turkey, and Yerevan, in Armenia.  Those who choose to stay are being muzzled by restrictions on free speech and free association.

Congratulations on your Great Leap Forward into the past, Russia.

But, no, I didn't intend this to be another foreign policy diatribe.

Nope.  As I said at the beginning, I'm like a bear coming out of hibernation.  I see all about me signs of spring.  Ukraine is far away; much closer are the flowers that bloom in the spring (tra la).  And like that awakening bear, I have a great hunger.  Not for food.  Not for honey.  But for travel.

And so, while the people of Ukraine have been suffering incredible losses of property, lives, and families, I have been indulgently planning myself a little trip.   Making bookings.  Flashing my Visa card.

You may recall that I broke my pandemic travel fast last May by traveling to Maine, to Bar Harbor?  I'm doing it again this year, May 16-20.  Like last year, I'll fly into Portland, Maine, spend the night in that pleasant city, and then drive to Bar Harbor.  I'll be away a day longer this year than last.  And -- since I once more will depend on United Airlines for my connecting flight from Newark to Portland -- I will this time hold my baggage close to my chest.  Not checked.  After last year, I have lost all confidence in that airline's ability to forward my checked possessions to the correct city.

Bar Harbor is beautiful in the spring.  I loved it last year.  I love Acadia National Park, which it adjoins.  And I love the Maine coast, which I hope to examine more extensively this year.

I'll have more to say about it in weeks to come.  Meanwhile, I look about, see what the world's become, shake my great furry head, and decide I'd best avoid further hibernation. 

Brain fog

I sit at my desk and write this in the waning hours of February 2022.  What am I writing about, and why?  To be honest, I'm writing because I've posted only five essays this month.  This travesty will be my sixth.

I wrote six essays last month, too.  I suppose February's short 28-day length would excuse me for writing fewer this month.  Right?  

Of course not!  Eleven essays, total, for January and February combined?  I posted eleven essays in January alone last year.

What's wrong with me?  I bragged last March that I had posted 148 essays during calendar year 2020.  That was, for me, by far a new record -- but then each year beginning with 2018 had set a new all-time record.

I won't be bragging about new records for 2021.

Yes, I realize that quality counts for far more than quantity.  But quality's a different, more subjective issue.  Quantity is mathematics, easily examined statistics.  And the statistics indicate that while the first three months of 2021 were up there in numbers -- eleven or twelve per month -- not one month after March 2021 has totaled more than nine posts -- and every month since July has come in at fewer than eight.

What's happened?  I can't give you a clear reason, let alone a justification.  Subjectively, I feel that not much interesting happened in 2021, or, for that matter, in the first two months of 2022.  But that's no excuse.  My talent, such as it is, has been to take uninteresting events and find reasons to make them interesting.  Of if not interesting, at least funny.  Interesting or funny, at least to me, which -- God knows -- is all I need as a reason for writing.

Maybe I suffer from mild depression?  Possibly.  But I still bounce out of bed in the morning; I still find daily ways to keep myself amused.  

Maybe the pandemic?  That has some plausibility.  The two years of the pandemic have kept me cooped up at home, although in 2021 it hasn't prevented me from traveling on occasion.  Being cooped has limited the number of things available to write about, and by the end of 2020, those topics may have been exhausted.  How many times can I write about long walks around my neighborhood?  Or the quality and/or quantity of Seattle rainfall? 

Of course the relationship to the pandemic that I don't care to consider is "brain fog."  Maybe, after being immunized, I unknowingly contracted a case of Covid, one that was asymptomatic, or accompanied by very minor symptoms -- but a case that eventually resulted in an inability to think critically, focus attention, be imaginative?  Brain fog?  No, let's not go there.

Let's just call it idiopathic writer's block.  That's a safe diagnosis, one that has a certain distinction by its association with many great writers.  A symptom that comes, but then -- usually -- goes.

Also, I should note that I lost a childhood friend in September -- a guy who himself was a professional writer and a retired newspaper editor.  He was one of the few known regular readers of this blog.  He generally emailed me some clever remarks about each essay as it was posted.  He rarely met the intended point I was trying to make in my essay, but instead remarked at great length and with savage humor on his reaction to some obscure reference contained in the essay -- often something that reminded him of some weird event in our mutual childhoods.

I never wrote consciously for his sole amusement -- who knew at what, in any given post, he would find reason to be amused?  But I suspect that my awareness that he would be reading each post with critical eye and bizarre sense of humor prompted more posts from me than might otherwise have come forth.

But maybe not.  I'm not sure his death had any real effect on my ability to find blog-worthy subjects.  But he would be the first to tell me, with a twinkle in his eye, "Yes, but isn't it pretty to think so."

War in Ukraine

Unless you're a fervent nationalist, most international disputes require careful, scholarly analysis.  An empathy for both sides.  A study of the pros and cons of war, from both nations' point of view.

The Ukraine War is different.  This is a war that was unprovoked -- not a retaliation against hostile acts by the other side.  It's an attack on a neighboring sovereign neighbor -- not a hotheaded response on the spur of the moment, but a war for which Russia has prepared for weeks, in plain view of the world.  "Premeditated," as we say in criminal law.

A war by a superpower against a small nation.  Unpleasant words come to mind.  "Thug."  "Bully."  

Unpleasant  historical analogies must also be recalled.  Mussolini's attack on primitive Abyssinia.  Germany's attack on Poland.  Wars fought not to right wrongs, from the viewpoint of the attacker, but simply to add some more square miles and human population to a would-be empire.  

After the Soviet Union ended in 1991, Russia had thirty years to develop a more democratic union, as it at first seemed anxious to do.  Russia had thirty years -- and enormous natural resources -- with which to develop a thriving economy, an economy that would give a good life, a decent living, not to just a privileged few, but to the entire Russian population.  

Russia frittered it all away.  It became increasingly autocratic.  We understand autocratic, since Trump is a pale avatar of Mr. Putin.  Russia developed large corporations, devoted largely to extraction and sale of the country's oil and minerals, and to very little else, corporations owned and managed by a small oligarchy, an oligarchy that loved Putin for what he was doing for them.

Russia's people asked for more.  They deserved more.  Russians are not, by nature and by historical experience, an impatient or demonstrative or disruptive people.  But they are an intelligent and well-educated people and -- surely -- were aware that their government did not have their interests at heart.  They watched as the Chinese, towards whom their government had long been condescending, rapidly outpaced them, leaving Russia as almost a client state of China. 

When you can't give your people what they want and deserve, change the subject by starting a war.  That's part of the explanation for Russia's actions this month.  Another explanation is extreme nationalism.  Patriotism may be the last refuge of scoundrels, as Samuel Johnson wrote, but Putin -- to give him his due, for what it's worth --  seems legitimately obsessed with nationalistic fervor, for the Glory of the Fatherland.  Many of our own people share this obsession, viewing national bodies as though they were individuals who were susceptible to insult and hurt feelings by other nations. I'm reminded of the line by a German boy in the trenches in All Quiet on the Western Front:

A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat.

But Putin sees disrespect and insult from other nations as the equivalent to disrespect and insult to himself.

And, in anger, he threatens the world with the devastation of nuclear weapons.

I have no solution to this war.  No one does.  No one can end it but the man who has caused it, all by himself.  And he apparently is now entranced by war.  He seems not at all interested in "solutions" short of conquest.

The losers won't be merely the Ukrainian people.  Russians also will lose, as many of Russia's citizens have already acknowledged.  But it is the soldiers, of course, who have the most to lose.  As the German soldier in Remarque's novel noted:

While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying. While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger.

All Quiet on the Western Front was published in 1929-30 and, together with the film based on it, was an international sensation.  Young men from many countries, including Germany, vowed they would never fight another war like World War I.  

Ten years later, Germany invaded Poland.  I'm not optimistic that reason and sense of shared humanity will overcome the fervor of Russian nationalism.